


Rescue Our Dreams

by Filthy_Pride



Category: Original Work
Genre: Dreams in Reality, Dreamscapes, F/F, Science Fiction, Short Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-15 14:16:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19618294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Filthy_Pride/pseuds/Filthy_Pride
Summary: What if there was a way to bring dreams into reality?





	Rescue Our Dreams

**R.O.D.**

_ Every part of her body burns. She doesn’t know how long she's been running for now. It could be minutes or hours. Her concept of time is nonexistent as she sprints. What from, she also does not know. She’s following her instincts- that primal part of her being that says “don’t stop”. _

_ She can’t see much. It’s dark. So dark that it feels like the color itself is choking her. It smells musty, the air humid and sticky. She can feel the sharp prickles of tall grass against her legs, so she is outside. That makes sense, if she was indoors she probably would’ve collided with something by now.  _

_ Huff. Puff. Gasp. _

_ She can only hear her own breathing until suddenly she hears it. IT- whatever it is that is chasing her- IT becomes audible, its feet stomping, crunching against the dry grass. _

_ “Please, no please!” she cries out. She can feel hot breath against her neck, sharp claws scratching at her back until she’s tackled and suddenly she's falling and falling and everything is burning limbs feeling twisted pain seeping into her bones- _

Adeline pants as she awakens. She claps to turn on the lights and instantly looks down at herself. ‘No marks anywhere’ she thinks, disappointed. She unhooks the wires from her chest and yanks the cap off her head. 

For months now, Adeline has been trying to bring dreams into reality. She, of course, hasn’t told anyone about her ambitions. Her girlfriend would try to slap her into next week if she ever found out. Hazel was a big believer of living in the now; the real, tangible now. If she knew Adeline was trying to force something into reality that didn’t belong, her whole world view would be challenged. And if Adeline knew anything from the years spent in contact with her, it was that Hazel didn’t take well to being challenged. It would drown her, be her every waking thought until she came to terms with it, which could be months. Yeah, Adeline didn’t want to deal with that, so she took to hiding away her project. 

It had taken a while to find a place to hide and build such a potentially dangerous experiment. Hazel would of course question why she was away so often, and her superiors would be suspicious. She does work for a highly top secret tech organization, so she is monitored at all times. But Adeline was a certified genius, so it was easy to pass it off as a recreational study of the brain.

Progress has been painstakingly slow. So far, Adeline had only successfully gotten to a point where dreams don’t fade. Before the R.O.D. -Rescue Our Dreams- project, dreams would always be hazy. She could never remember more than one or two meaningless details before the whole sequence slipped away. Now, dreams were like memories. Still categorized as dreams, of course, it would be a terrible thing to not be able to differentiate dream from reality, but easy to recall. 

Groaning, Adeline shuts off the machine. Meticulously putting away each item, she backs away. She goes through a mental checklist of where everything is before hiding all her real  research, instead planting false studies of the circulatory development of the brain or some crap similar to that. It’s 10 pm when she finally locks up the lab and heads home, already thinking of a reason why she would be wide awake so late.

* * *

_ The sun glitters on every windowpane in downtown Olympia. The sky, a beautiful blue-white canvas spreads as far as the eye can see overhead. Birds sing sweet songs as Adeline walks down the street. The sun feels so good on her skin, not hot enough to burn, but just right for a crisp golden tan. She truly cannot imagine a better place to live.  _

_ It’s when she passes by a local restaurant that it finally dawns on her. No one else is outside. With this realization, she frantically looks around and sees every shop locked up tight, frightened and shocked civilians whispering curiously.  _

_ There’s a loud crack, and suddenly the canvas-like sky creaks. There’s a disturbing movement in the clouds, almost as if the entire sky is being bent when it finally snaps. And then it’s collapsing. The entire sky.  _

_ Adeline can only stare in shock as it crumbles. She is forced out of her stupor when a large piece of, she doesn’t even know what to call it, falls right in front of her. She looks to the closest building for shelter. Banging on the doors she begs to be let in, to no avail. She desperately tries to break the glass doors punching and kicking until it shatters. The shards rip into her unforgivingly, cutting her skin and then- _

“Jesus!” 

Adeline jolts viciously, hyper-aware of the stinging present on her skin. Her pale skin has nasty red marks scattered all over. There’s no blood like there was in the dream, but those angry red lines hadn’t been there before she booted up the ROD system.

She could not contain her joy. After months and months, whole days spent on just tweaking code she finally did it. She managed to keep some physical semblance from a dream. The next challenge would be trying to keep certain traits, and her brain was already whirring when she hears a whimper of confusion.

“Ad- Adeline?”

She freezes. It’s Hazel. She knows it is.

“What have you done?”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I would like to eventually flush this idea out into a full book, so constructive criticism is welcome. Consider this a very, very early draft. As always, thanks for the read.


End file.
